TRANSCRIPT: RADIO INTERVIEW - ABC RN - MONDAY, JULY 20

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO NATIONAL WITH FRAN KELLY
MONDAY, 20 JULY 2020

SUBJECTS: Parliament; JobKeeper; JobSeeker; industrial relations.

FRAN KELLY, HOST: Tony Burke is the Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations and the Manager for Opposition Business. Tony Burke, welcome to RN breakfast. 

TONY BURKE, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: Hi Fran. 

KELLY: Yet another sitting has been cancelled. The COVID crisis has been with us now for more than six months. Shouldn't we have worked it out by now how Parliament can sit in a safe and healthy manner? Why is it beyond us?

BURKE: We thought we had worked it out. And you've seen the images of Parliament with everyone sitting further apart. We ended up with a system where every member of Parliament could make speeches but not everyone would be there for votes and not everyone would be there for question time. We'd eliminated all the touch points that people would have, common touch points throughout the building. So we thought this had been fixed and then we were presented with the new medical advice, and it has to be possible to still be able to meet in person. Obviously you know for the weeks, for the fortnight that's coming, once you get health advice like that you think okay we'll take that, but it can't happen again. And the way to fix this is to have the representatives from the parties sitting down with the presiding officers - the Speaker and the President - and with the Chief Medical Officers of both the ACT and the Commonwealth, and to say okay what protocols do we need to put in place? Now you've toughened the health advice, what do we need to do to be able to make it work? We know that there has to be possible because Josh Frydenberg is able to go –

KELLY: Sure, I guess you could argue that one is easier to control than many. The key point seems to be we have to be able to meet in person. The Greens leader Adam Bandt isn't the only one to point out that employers around the country have had to move to an online workplace. Employees have had to adjust, it's been tough for teachers in particular, they were expected to shift within a week or two. Very tough. Why should Australians have to adapt but our parliamentarians don't have to? Isn't an online option possible?

BURKE: The committee system has adapted to online and so Members of Parliament are working that way all the time. It's whether or not you're willing to accept that we would lose something further by never having that gathering face-to-face which is how parliaments around the world function. Now some people will say oh it makes no difference. I've got to say that's just not my view. It makes a big difference to have people, not only for the extra conversations that happen when people are physically in the same space, but also for a prime minister who has made a claim to be able to confront them and hold them to account face-to-face in the same room is a different thing.

KELLY: Sure, but so is teaching in a classroom but you’re going for an all-or-nothing approach. No one’s talking about this being permanent and hopefully ultimately not too long but there is a pretty intense outbreak in Victoria in particular. I mean shouldn't there be some backup rather than nothing?

BURKE: That's exactly why we've sent a letter to the Speaker and the President, so that we can work out what the protocols are that allow us to meet in person. It has to be possible.

KELLY: So you will not accept, Labor is not interested in the online option at all even as a backup?

BURKE: I'm not going to start by giving away what is the best way to conduct a democracy. I'm not going to start with that and pretend that we don't give a whole lot away. I've seen in the last couple of years alone times when they've cancelled parliamentary sittings because they were worried about the numbers ,they've cancelled parliamentary sittings because they wanted to get rid of a prime minister. When the pandemic started they tried to cancel parliamentary sittings for a full six months and we said that wouldn't hold. At every turn, even when we do sit. You know the new Members of Parliament there have voted more times on the Government side to silence Labor Members of Parliament than they have voted to pass legislation. Now when you've got a Government that at every turn has tried to stifle the face-to-face gathering, I'm not going to just say well there's a pandemic now let's just cancel it and we'll do it all online. Face-to-face makes a difference, that's why Scott Morrison has tried so many times to avoid it. This approach to the Speaker and the President is to say let's get together with the Chief Medical Officers and work out how we can fix it. Because as I say, if the Treasurer has been able to find protocols that can be followed - and I'm sure they are very strict - but if those protocols are possible how can we make them work for the Parliament?

KELLY: You’re listening to RN breakfast. Our guest is Tony Burke. He's the Shadow Minister for IR and the Manager of Opposition Business. Mentioning the Treasurer there, he'll deliver that economic statement on Thursday which will include a new round of income support after JobKeeper ends in September. It is likely to be limited to the industries hit the hardest by COVID and the businesses that quote “genuinely need it” says Mathias Cormann. Where does Labor want this money to be targeted?

BURKE: Well in terms of the loans that are announced today, that specific proposal we haven't seen yet. But any proposals the Government has come forward with that helps small business we've approached very constructively. The biggest issue for keeping people in jobs, and keeping the businesses that provide jobs going at the moment, the biggest issue is the future of JobKeeper. And we've been pushing hard to say that the September cliff cannot continue and that demand - 

KELLY: So it's not going to continue, the government is going to keep some sectors in it, my question to you is what is Labor, where does Labor want the money to be targeted and how much should workers be paid to keep them attached to their employers until they get to the other side? You have a minimum figure in mind?

BURKE: We're not proposing a dollar figure. What we what we are saying though is the sorts of changes that you would be able to make to the current scheme are to better target it to allow it to be to be tapered, and to retest the different businesses. It's reasonable to say that a business that was in at the beginning of the pandemic, if they have recovered, then they shouldn't be eligible anymore or that there should be some phase-out process, that's completely reasonable. In terms of better targeting it, we've always said it was ridiculous that a casual worker who was supporting a family working five days a week missed out because she'd only been there for 11 months, and yet someone who was working one shift a week was suddenly getting 10 times their income. There's been a reasonable amount of waste and lack of targeting in how the Government handled it first time around, and those retargeting issues are something that they could change very easily.

KELLY: Okay what about the JobSeeker rate. It's unlikely to fall back, most people think anyway, to the old you Newstart rate of $565 a fortnight. All up more than 2.2 million people are receiving the coronavirus supplement, including single parents. Will Labor put a figure on where that rate should be set? And what should be the driver of that decision? The impact on the budget or keeping people out of poverty?

BURKE: Well certainly it needs to keep people out of poverty, and your $40 a day was not enough to live on. And it needs to be enough for people to be able to live on, but also enough that you've got enough money to be able to go out and go out looking for work. The one thing that we need, and so I'm not going to put a dollar figure on it again, but what I what I will say Fran is there's an argument floating around that the government's starting to want to get into this, let's blame the unemployed person argument from time to time. There's been some of that language starting to creep in. Just allow me to say, when for every job vacancy there are 13 people unemployed. When that's the situation Australia is in right now we need to accept that people who are out of work, it is not for lack of trying. There are not the jobs there right now and they need to be properly supported. It can't go back to the old rate.

KELLY: You won't say whether it should be $75 a week extra or $100 a week extra? You must have some figure in mind because - .

BURKE: No, no, I have just said to you I'm not going to put a dollar figure on it.

KELLY: Alright. Just finally there is a push by business to retain what was supposed to be temporary changes to the workplace laws that make it easier for employers to vary a worker’s hours and duties while they're on JobKeeper. In April Labor agreed to the changes to the Fair Work Act which, businesses said have saved jobs. If it means keeping people in work, do you agree all sides need to be more flexible in the longer term?

BURKE: Well the changes to the Fair Work Act to be agreed to were on the basis that JobKeeper was being extended and those extra rules only applied to people who were on JobKeeper. Now we don't know how they're going to extend JobKeeper or what it'll be, but certainly there is a reasonable argument for people who are still on JobKeeper that you would have that sort of extension. So a proposal like that we expect will come forward, if they're extending JobKeeper and we would look at that favourably. 

KELLY: So just to be clear, Labor would only support exemptions for companies who were eligible for the revised JobKeeper?

BURKE: The government would really have to make a strong case as to why it is that they would stop supporting workers and yet would expect workers to be making an exceptional sacrifice. Now in the normal event, unions have always worked with employers to make sure that people stay in jobs, and there's flexibility already within the Fair Work Act for that. But the exceptional rules that are there were there for JobKeeper.

KELLY: Tony Burke, thank you very much for joining us. 

BURKE: Great to talk to you.

ENDS